NHL: Flyers trade for familiar face: Simon Gagne

First, Michael Leighton signed back on as an unrestricted free agent. Then Ruslan Fedotenko did, too.

When the season finally began six months or so later, a trade was made for Mike Knuble. Then Brian Boucher was brought back in for the 20th time or so.

Now, in what’s been a stop-and-go season of retrograde Flyers hockey, Simon Gagne is the latest old Flyer making a grand return.

“It’s always a shock, first of all, getting traded,” said Gagne, the Flyers’ best goal scorer of the early-mid 2000s, twice exceeding 40 goals and four times getting more than 30 in a campaign. “But when telling me the place I would be going, the place (where I played) for more than 10 years and where everything started ... the place where I’m really familiar, I’m really excited to go back.”

So for a conditional 2013 draft pick — a third-rounder if the Flyers make the playoffs and a fourth-rounder if they do not — the Flyers Tuesday acquired an old friend from the Los Angeles Kings with 283 career goals and 586 points. But coming off a season in which he played only 34 games due to a concussion, Gagne has played just 11 times with the Kings this season. He has no goals and five assists and was a healthy scratch the past four games.

“Health-wise, I feel really good,” Gagne said. “Hockey-wise, it’s a little tougher. The last couple of weeks, (it was) in and out of the lineup and not playing much; trying to understand what was my role here with the Kings this year. Trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s part of the game and now it’s behind me and it’s time to focus on what I have to do to help the Flyers to win.”

Though it seems he’s been around a long time, only 32 years have gotten behind Gagne. He becomes the second current Flyer to have played on the same team in Philly as Eric Lindros (Boucher is still here, right?), yet Gagne only turns 33 Thursday.

But it’s the mileage that’s accrued on him during a career that began in 1999 that’s of prime concern. Gagne sat out the last 46 games of the 2011-12 regular season because of the concussion, but he surprised many by returning to play four games in the Stanley Cup finals against the Devils, though he contributed no points.

In June, he had a sensitive surgical procedure to remove a mass in his neck. Gagne said he “felt better right away” after the surgery.

“I feel really good since the surgery. The neck problem was going on for quite a while and it was a tough situation the last couple years having the head injury,” Gagne said. “But who knows, it was maybe more my neck sometime. ... It was a tricky place to do the surgery, around the neck and close to nerves and stuff like that. After that I felt the difference right away. Just overall, like in normal life, coming to the house, playing with the kids, sleeping at night, stuff like that, it makes a huge difference. I’m now really excited about that.”

Gagne said it made him eager to start the season, but the lockout intervened. And with the rust of missing most of the season, Gagne admits his skills suffered. When the season finally began, what he was doing was not enough to convince Kings coach Darryl Sutter to keep playing him. He said he’d considered asking for a trade at that point.

“I talked to my agent three days ago and the situation here, you could tell it was not going to get better,” Gagne said. “It’s just a little different now. I have a family (with) two kids, and you’re thinking about them a lot more than you’re thinking about yourself. So I was willing to suck it up, maybe for a couple more games or a couple more weeks, and see what’s going to happen here. But in the end I knew it was not my place here and it was time to move on.”

As it turned out, Kings GM Dean Lombardo and assistant Ron Hextall pulled the trigger without Gagne needing to ask.

“They have a lot of depth there as well,” Holmgren said of the Kings. “It’s hard to argue with their thought process. They’re a very big team that plays a special style.”

One that didn’t mesh well with Gagne’s rusted finesse game, apparently. But the Flyers are in dire enough scoring straits that they say it’s easy to swallow the $3.5 million (pro-rated down, of course) cap hit that Gagne brings with him. Gagne says it will be worth the effort.

“The skill was coming back, but it’s hard when you start to feel your game coming back and you’re not playing,” Gagne said. “But like I said, the games I played here this year I was feeling really good. I think it’s just a matter of playing a little more hockey and all that stuff will come back.”

Holmgren, instrumental in drafting Gagne nearly 15 years ago, had seen Matt Read go down with a muscle tear in his rib cage last week, and rookie Tye McGinn suffer a fractured orbital bone in a fight Monday night.

Suddenly, there was room for another old friend. Despite Gagne’s problems this season, Holmgren says, “he’s still a good two-way player that can skate.

“He seems excited to be coming back,” Holmgren added. “I’m looking forward to seeing him play and help us.”